Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/52

46 Oregon" story, he has the strongest kind of personal and family interest in finding some method of making that story appear to be true.

But when all allowances have been made for these matters, and also for his apparently total lack of any sense of humor, the public had a right to demand of him either that he should not have written at all, or that he should have produced a much more creditable book than he has, since all these, deficiencies cannot justify the deliberate concealment or misquotation of such authorities as are perfectly well known to the author.

It must also be remembered that with all these deficiencies he has one qualification that should have enabled him speedily to get at the whole truth about Marcus Whitman, and that is, that as a son of Rev. C. Eells, he could have freest access to all the correspondence of Whitman and all his associates with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and also more easily than any one else could get access to their correspondence with relations and friends, and their journals. He makes great claims to fairness and moderation and candor and desire to have the truth appear, declaring (p. 37), "The writer has no objection to scientific history as above defined, namely, the facts written at or near the time they occurred. He has tried to obtain all such scientific history that he could for all his writings. He has searched old books, pamphlets and letters for it. He thinks highly of it, and more highly of only one thing, and that is the truth. This he places above everything," and (p. 43) "The writer believes in trying to find the truth of history, wherever it can be found."

Let us see how his "Reply" compares with this alleged candor and fairness and desire to discover and state the truth "wherever found." As the "Reply" is partly aimed at my discussion of Professor Bourne's paper at the 1900 meeting of the American Historical Association, I will first examine his treatment of that discussion, as printed in Transactions American Historical Association for 1900, pages 219-236 (and herewith reprinted), of which he had a copy with my compliments. On pages 20-22 he takes up the account of my work in driving the Whitman Saved Oregon story, (and all the misrepresentations about Oregon history which are necessary postulates of that story) out of school histories, and says that it was done